


Say 'Au Revoir' But Not Goodbye

by emkaaaay



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 06:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12788958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emkaaaay/pseuds/emkaaaay
Summary: “‘M afraid I proposed,” Lord Peter told his whiskey.“Proposed,” Phryne repeated.“Yes.  Marriage.”There was a pause as she took this in.  “She was in prison.  You’d been called in, all monocled, to keep her from hanging.  And your suggestion to her was holy matrimony.”Peter flourished a hand in a sad sort of bow.





	Say 'Au Revoir' But Not Goodbye

“‘M afraid I proposed,” Lord Peter told his whiskey.

“Proposed,” Phryne repeated.

“Yes. Marriage.”

There was a pause as she took this in. “She was in prison. You’d been called in, all monocled, to keep her from hanging. And your suggestion to her was holy matrimony.”

Peter flourished a hand in a sad sort of bow.

They were still dressed from dinner, but in an unfastened sort of way— he’d loosened his tie, and her heelless feet were tucked under her. With Bunter away at his mother’s, Peter had bypassed the sitting room for the library, with its hearth and armchairs and forgiving light. Phryne had spent several minutes puzzling out what made it so extravagantly comfortable. She could do books and tobacco at home; what else was in the air? The answer seemed to be ‘six centuries of money,’ which even her contacts couldn’t export to Melbourne. That and a certain shape of wall sconce, which she was sure they could. 

Three courses at the Criterion had carried them through that period of re-measuring that came with seeing old friends. Paris memories, their own crimes and others’, Paul Delgardie’s health. She hadn’t seen him since leaving London for a trip that, as he’d reproached her, she’d claimed would be a short one. A ship voyage to comb her mind out and a few months of business, she’d said, and here they were in the thirties! 

He’d elided that case and all his thoughtful counsel about it with “business” and ordered more wine. They’d moved on to a recent string of dockside murders in Perth. It was comforting to remember that even in the Paris years some of her choices had been very good indeed.

Peter was as careful as she was, and they were just now arriving at whatever had changed him. Which was the apparently new experience of being turned down flat.

“She didn’t seem trapped,” Peter said, “even there.” When Phryne didn’t dignify this with a response, he went on. “You’re entirely right, of course. Inexcusable. I just— I’d gotten so tired of the surface of things. Half-forgotten there was anything worth having below all the bally surface. And along comes this person who refuses to have any surface at all. Felt as if I recognized her, which may be the most dire foolishness I’ve said aloud since the war. Didn’t expect the relief.” 

“She’d be forgiven for fleeing the country and changing her name,” said Phyne severely.

“She only fled as far as Doughty Street. Every few months we go to dinner. I am patience on a monument. And her name is now quite a valuable one— I’m told her latest’s flying off the shelves.”

“Tell me you don’t have a press-clippings drawer.”

He blushed, which doused the last real rancor in her, though clearly a lesson had to be learned.

“I’m trying to picture it,” she said. “You’re locked in a cell with this woman and you don’t propose dinner but marriage. If she’s a Bloomsbury type she’s very likely heard of the intermediate steps.”

“That was her suggestion,” he said, “living together. I wonder how hard you will laugh when I tell you it felt like a slap.” 

“I’d imagine she intended it as one.”

He grimaced. “She lived with this poisoned chap, Boyles, which is what made the trial so dashed lurid. He was a good little Bolshevik— marriage the provenance of weak minds and free love a force for revolution.”

“Sounds dashing,” Phryne offered, grinning when Peter shot her a glare.

“From what I understand she ‘gave in’ after some months and then stormed out on principle when he later deigned to propose.”

She laughed. “Points for spirit, if not taste.”

“Plenty of both, in most regards. Took a first in English at Shrewsbury before running off to write detective novels in a garret.”

“Ah, there it is. You’ve found yourself a matching quotation machine.” 

“You wound me.” 

“Family?”

“Seemingly none, and so used to it she doesn’t think to complain. A fine-hearted subset of her Bohemian crew came to collect her after the verdict—painters and such.” 

“Fine-hearted Bohemians will save us all.”

“Quite possibly. They went so far as to tolerate the likes of me at their parties during the case, once they’d gathered I was on the angels’ side.”

Phryne laughed. “Peter Wimsey, don of Bloomsbury.”

“Marjorie was my Virgil.” This led to a half-glass’s worth of updates on how Marjorie was, and Toulouse, and a score of of people they’d once seen nightly and these days heard of third-hand.

“Years ago, now,” Phryne mused, inspecting her hands: clean, jeweled, palms smooth, backs recently a little so. 

“One wouldn’t know it,” said Peter, toasting her. 

“We will tomorrow morning.” She raised her glass and then finished it. “Though age has lots to recommend it. Some day I’ll bleach all my hair silver and claim I’ve had an elegant shock. But not yet. And how’s your family?” 

“Esteemed sister recently wedded,” he said, fun entering his eyes, “to a policeman. A dour, steady sort of fellow with an excellent nose for murder.”

“My congratulations.” She allowed herself to sparkle. “I’ve heard impeccable things about the type.” 

“Parker— m’brother-in-law— met the famed Inspector Robinson at Scotland Yard last week, but failed to tell me much beyond Australian and tall. Shockingly unprofessional of him.”

She struck a pose and smiled. “We all need a bit of mystery.”

“There’s still time to solve the case,” offered Peter. “Stay through June and we’ll all wander across to Cannes.”

“You’re too kind, though I’m not sure he’s eager to return to France.”

He nodded, sobered. “Add the Riviera to the monuments.”

She shrugged. “We’ve all got something.”

“And he was there when you caught Foyle,” Peter said, with a neutrality she knew as kindness.

She nodded once. The fire popped.

“There are people you recognize,” she told the fire. “I’m not saying there aren’t. And I understand the relief.”

He poured them each another drink.

 

\--- 

 

They wound down before the fire did, a mark of personal growth. Peter served them both water in champagne glasses snagged from the sideboard, noting that Bunter would be deeply ashamed. 

“He was sorry to miss you,” he said, “and sent his best, etcetera, etcetera.”

Phryne smiled into the distance in such a way that Peter choked on his non-champagne.

“You never heard about that?” she asked while he coughed. “Well, at least one soul among us is discreet.” 

Coat. Hat (new, green, and extraordinary). London rain. Peter found himself a jacket but conceded bare-headedness to the times and the hour. She and Jack were heading home next week, she told him as they sought a cab, and when work allowed he must make his way south. She’d heard rumors that in these modern times one could travel there by aeroplane. 

“But one imagines a certain invincibility is required,” he said, all but diving into the street to block a slow cab as it turned the corner, “to go that far and remain oneself. I’m not at all sure I have it. ‘Spose that’s why I like people who do.” He kissed her hand, his hair beginning to drip. “Remain indomitable, Phryne Fisher.”

He passed her in and told the driver her hotel address, which she was quite sure she’d never mentioned, though she appreciated that he did not attempt to pay. “Evening, ma’am,” said the driver in a voice like her father’s. Then Peter was sliding past the fogged windows, upright and familiar and waving goodbye. 

Leaving someone always felt to her like the stretching of a cord. It went slack when they were close enough to touch, close enough to laugh with, and then taxis pulled away and you only had them in your mind. Back in Paris she’d thought that was mostly a temporary state. 

But in Paris, leaving hadn’t meant returning. She closed her eyes and pictured crisp May sun, set it against the backseat’s chill. Peacock walls, silk sheets, eucalyptus. Jack at the door. Her kitchen table and the voices around it.

**Author's Note:**

> Greetings, hello, let’s all assume Phryne knew Peter and Bunter in Paris before the war. (This works better if you believe, as I do, that she’s closer to Essie Davis’s age than her canon birthdate would suggest.) This takes place around 1931-2, not too long after Strong Poison and a few years after the third season of Miss Fisher ends.
> 
> Title source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QVjrBRyx_o


End file.
